Fox Glacier Part 1

We woke up to blue skies, actually able to see Franz Josef a glacier and the mountains that were completely obscured by clouds when we came into town last night. In our original itinerary, we would have been doing this tour yesterday, in the pouring rain, so our good weather luck struck again! We made our way down to Fox Glacier town, to our tour meeting point.

We all got geared up before heading to the helipad for our flight up to the glacier! Our group was just the 2 of us and 2 Israeli girls who just finished their military service, so everyone got a chance to ride in the front seat of the helicopter! We landed on a helipad that the company has built on the glacier, and typically has to move every couple of months because the glacier moves so quickly. It's crazy seeing how big everything is as we land. The rain over the past few days means that a lot of the dirt has washed away, leaving clean and shiny ice.

We strap on our crampons, grab our ice axes and start trekking across the glacier in search of a feature on which we can learn some climbing skills. We spend the rest of the morning on one feature that offered 5 different routes. The ice starts out very hard and brittle since the previous days' rain had melted away the soft exterior layer, but it softens up as the sun and warm weather start to take effect. By mid afternoon, we pack things up and do some more glacier walking to check out some crevasses further down the glacier. We are able to rappel down into one to experience the beautiful blue ice before climbing back out.

Once we were all thoroughly exhausted, we made our way back to the helipad for the trip back into town. All in all, this was an incredible way to experience the glacier!

Most of the photos of us actually climbing are on the camera and I'm limited in the number of photos per post, so part 2 will come tomorrow!Read more